A new survey indicates that more and more people are trusting the Internet for …

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Pew/Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit research firm established by two sons and two daughters of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew, has released a report that looks at the growing role of the Internet in people's lives.

The report surveyed 2,201 Americans and asked them questions about their use of the Internet to make major life decisions. The areas specifically mentioned were: purchasing a new vehicle, making a major financial or investment decision, obtaining additional education or training for oneself or a child, and helping another person deal with a major illness or health condition. On average, 45 percent of Internet users surveyed said the Internet helped them make at least one major decision, up from 40 percent of those who answered the same survey in 2002. The highest ratio was 54 percent, for people helping someone cope with an illness, and the lowest was 23 percent for people buying a new car.

When combined with stats showing that 44 percent of the population of the US is online, this results in 60 million Americans who use the Internet to make big decisions. This is a staggering number, and has already had major implications for how companies allocate advertising funds across multiple media. It also raises questions about whether or not people are finding accurate and useful information online.

This concern doesn't seem to be a major issue among those who sought information online. Only five percent said they encountered bad information while carrying out their research, and 57 percent said that online information was the most important source of data in their search. Information overload was also not considered to be a problem. Just 15 percent of those surveyed felt that they sometimes felt overwhelmed by the amount of information they had.

This confidence in the Internet as an information source could be a good thing, but it all depends on the quality of the information itself. Concerns about the accuracy of content on sites like Wikipedia have yet to be addressed, and online medical information, while improving, is still not guaranteed to be correct. However, despite these concerns, it seems clear that people have largely accepted the Internet as a major factor in their lives, and are becoming increasingly reliant on it for their decision making.